Emergency Medicine
by QoS
Summary: Two medics meet by chance on a battlefield. And after a clash of ideologies and personalities - not to mention weapons - neither of them will be quite the same.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's note: This fic is dedicated to Kookaburra, since it's her birthday. :) Hope you have a wonderful day, with much cake and presents!_

* * *

The storm hit with the force of a sledgehammer.

In the few months of his life, First Aid had seen bad weather, but nothing like that. Nothing like the lightning that snaked down from the sky, crackling hotter than the surface of the Sun, leaping to whatever conducted electricity—like metal bodies. Nothing like the hailstones the size of ball-bearings, which actually hurt when they struck his headlights. The mud churning beneath his wheels was a minor impediment compared to those, but it still slowed him down enough that one of the Seekers fired at him—and struck.

Hot pain lanced through First Aid's right front tire and he went into a skid. He transformed as he did so, fetching up against a boulder, and scrambled to his feet as he cut the feed from his pain receptors in the damaged area. The tire had burst, and he could tell the axle was nearly severed.

_Not much point in transforming. Or merging._ Defensor, under those circumstances, would be little more than a huge lightning-rod, with electrical surges scrambling the Protectobots'circuits and components into chaos.

_My team_. First Aid raised his helm, automatically shutting off fuel and oil lines to his wounded shoulder and searched the sky, but there was no sign of Blades. He hoped fervently the 'copter wasn't trying to fly. The winds had reached gale-force level. Even as he watched, he saw a jet—impossible to tell, in the darkness and the flashes of optic-burning light, whether it was an Aerialbot or a Seeker—tossed through the air before it went into a barrel roll towards the ground.

The storm howled. First Aid tried to see where the plane had landed, because whoever that mech was, he might need medical attention, but it was too dark. He opened his comm, but heard nothing except fragments of words, static, and—worst of all—a brief scream that ended almost at once.

_Soundwave's jamming the transmissions_. For the first time that night, First Aid felt tired. His only consolation was that no humans had been involved in the battle, though the storm was unlikely to have spared them.

At least the gestalt link that held the Protectobots together was still there. First Aid touched it with a fraction of his consciousness, the rest of his sensors and processors alert to his surroundings.

Cool calculation and raw fury clashed, but beneath them was concern, and a calm authority harnessed it all into a force stronger than the storm. First Aid felt better at once. If he had fed even a flash of pain into the link, his teammates would have fought their way to him, but he didn't want them distracted from their work, and there were mechs with far worse damage. He could wait it out.

_Besides, I'm a medic. I can patch myself up._

Thankfully the wind seemed to have slowed; it no longer flung freezing rain or hailstones at his face, and he saw the high, jagged crest of a hill just a few yards away. It was bare rock on which nothing grew, but it was also tall enough to give him some shelter. Thunder roared so loudly that he felt vibrations thrum through his exostructure as he hurried towards the cliff.

One of his feet slipped in the mud and he went to a knee just as he reached the cliff, his vents rasping hoarsely. Hauling himself upright, he glanced behind him and slipped around the cliff, keeping his back to the rock.

His olfactory sensors caught it first—the scent of half-processed energon and spilled fuel. First Aid glanced down, puzzled. He hadn't been leaking _that_ badly.

Then he saw the pink smears on the ground, and the deep scrapes where a heavy weight had been dragged. The top of the cliff slanted slightly overhead, cutting off the rain that might have washed those away.

No longer tired at all, First Aid followed the marks, and his gaze went from them to the mech who sat in the lee of the cliff, half-curled over a leg drawn close to his body. The stains of energon on the limb were so bright they almost outshone the red optics, though in the shadows, both green and purple paint were equally dark.

"Don't come any closer, Autobot," Hook said softly.

With the rain no longer pelting down against his chassis, First Aid heard him clearly enough. He stood where he was, wondering if Hook was going to shoot him, but the Constructicon only watched him in silence without moving.

_This is silly_, First Aid thought. Obviously Hook needed to perform field repairs on his damaged leg, something a medic should be able to do easily, but he wasn't doing anything because he was too busy staring at First Aid. _And vice versa_. He took a cautious pace forward.

Hook stiffened, straightening up so his crane-arm was flat against the rock behind him.

"I'm not going to attack you." First Aid was completely out of the storm by then, and water ran off his plating in rivulets as he sat down. He could feel mud oozing cool between his seams.

Hook chuckled without humor. "As if you could."

First Aid said nothing, because it wasn't a question of ability. He was armed. He had just never attacked anyone, especially not a wounded mech—and one who was a medic like him. That was probably the only thing they had in common, though.

"You can go ahead and fix your leg," he said. "Or… did you need any help?"

"If I did, I'd hardly call on someone who rolled off the assembly line yesterday."

One or two of the Autobots had made similar comments to the Protectobots— though not where Ratchet or Wheeljack could hear them—so First Aid had learned not to take it personally. "I can't help when I was built," he said.

Hook looked at him as though First Aid was a calculator which, no matter how often it was repaired and calibrated and adjusted, continued to add two and two to make five. "Perhaps not," he said, "but you could at least attempt not to be so naïve. Offering to repair someone on the opposite side isn't a sign of nobility. It's an indication of rank stupidity instead."

"It's neither." First Aid kept his voice calm, determined not to let himself be riled up. "I don't like to see anyone in pain."

Hook's optics gleamed. "This gets more and more amusing. What are you doing in an army, then?"

"I can't help where I was built, either. Besides, an army needs medics."

"The kind who persist in repairing their enemies are likely to make the war last that much longer." Hook started to straighten his leg and winced, but continued with hardly a pause. "And don't imagine I'll be so grateful for your assistance that I'll considerately refrain from shooting you through the spark if I get the chance. Or, for that matter, from disassembling one of your teammates for spare parts. I think the helicopter would do quite nicely as replacements for some of Vortex's components."

First Aid's fuel turned to cold liquid lead. His pump lurched, struggling to move the icy weight, but although his systems returned to normal in astroseconds, he didn't feel any better. The frozen fear had melted away under an anger he might have felt previously—from one of his teammates—but which had never before originated from him.

And Hook, he realized, had been watching him intently, one corner of his mouth turning upward. "Didn't like that, did you?" he said.

First Aid was glad, insofar as he could feel happy about anything under those circumstances, that he wore a mask, because on the rear wheels of his spurt of temper came confusion. How could Hook—who also had a gestalt whom he must have cared about, on some level—threaten someone else's team? _Maybe he's just saying that to make me leave_, he thought, though he knew Blades and Streetwise would think it was ridiculous to give any Decepticon that much benefit of the doubt.

Whatever Hook's motives were, though, First Aid didn't plan on listening to any further mind games of that kind. "Leave them out of this," he said, his voice hard.

"No. Elemental fact about gestalt dynamics—you never just deal with one mech."

First Aid was used to handling refractory Autobots who tried to refuse necessary medical attention, or who wanted to leave the repair bay before getting the medic's say-so, and at that moment he needed all the strength of will those experiences had taught him. "I said, leave them out of this. I'm still willing to help you if you're badly damaged, but if you keep on hating me after that, take it out on me, not them."

Hook sighed and shook his head. "You're not important enough to hate. I feel nothing for you except perhaps contempt. But very well, if you want to help me, see what you can do. My right knee joint's completely dislocated, and I don't have enough leverage to reset it."

_Familiar ground, at last._ First Aid got to his feet, his HUD pulling up a schematic of a typical joint, calculating the exact amount of pressure to apply and where. "Did you seal off every line?" he said.

"No," Hook said flatly. "I'm so unskilled I just sat here and allowed myself to leak to death."

_At least there's nothing wrong with your sarcasm subroutines_, First Aid thought. "Just making sure," he said as he approached. "All right, extend your leg as much as you can and I'll do a scan before I—"

Hook straightened his leg fully and swept it out in a hard arc. His shin smashed into First Aid's ankle-joints, knocking First Aid's feet out from under him. First Aid fell, saw a burning flash and knew Hook had pulled a laser scalpel from subspace. He landed on his chestplate, hands in the mud as he struggled to get out of reach. A searing line drew itself down the plating over his left arm as Hook struck.

First Aid rolled over, bringing his hands up instinctively—and flung fistfuls of mud at Hook. One wet clump splattered across the red optics. In the second it took him to wipe them clean, First Aid scrambled away out of arm's reach, sat up and drew his photon pistol.

_Fire_, he thought. His left arm hurt where Hook had carved the armor open, but the emotion that surged through the gestalt link was half panic and half fury, as the other Protectobots realized he was in danger. It was that which pointed his pistol at Hook—who had dropped the laser scalpel in the mud—and it was that which tightened his hands on the gun's grip, edging one finger on to the trigger.

His own conviction wouldn't allow him to go any further. _Shoot him? Shoot a medic who doesn't even seem to have a gun? And then what? Leave a blinded mech here alone, surrounded by a storm and in the middle of a battle? Shoot him, so that when he recovers he can shoot me back and it can go round and round in a circle until one or both of us is dead?_

Before he could say any of that, before he could even say that he meant no harm, Hook's arm whipped back over one shoulder. He wrenched the cable loose from his crane-mount and lashed it out like a whip. The end of it hit First Aid in the face.

The hook at the cable's tip shattered his right optic and lodged in the socket. First Aid's now-halved vision went red with damage reports and before he could recover, Hook grabbed the cable with both hands. Then he yanked on it with all his strength.

But although First Aid could barely see the cable, he had no difficulty feeling it—and while he carried medical tools as well, his most powerful lasers were built into his wrists. One hand retracted in the next moment, and a lance of concentrated light blazed out like lightning. The cable snapped. Hook staggered back, shoulders striking the cliff behind him, and First Aid's vision cleared just in time to see the faintly surprised look vanish from the other medic's cold, composed face.

Over his own ventilations—and the faint _plink_ as a blue splinter fell on his knee—First Aid heard the storm rasping at the windward side of the hills and the low grind of thunder moving away. He hadn't subspaced his pistol and it still pointed at Hook, but after what felt like a very long time, Hook bent and retrieved his laser scalpel. He extinguished the blade and slipped the hilt into a subspace compartment before sitting down again.

"Still not going to shoot me?" he said, almost conversationally.

First Aid had taken all the pain receptors around his right optical orbit offline—the stab to his plating was a long shallow incision, stinging but not immediately significant—and now he extracted the hook with his free hand before he spoke. "Don't you have a gun?"

"I was disarmed during the battle." Carefully, Hook began to wipe mud and energon from his frame.

_Probably another lie_, First Aid thought, but either way he knew what his answer would be. "No."

Hook's optic ridges drew together below his helm.

"No, I'm not going to shoot you." First Aid wasn't happy about the new damage he had taken, but he was calm again. He couldn't control this Decepticon's behavior, but he could still keep acting with the courage of his own convictions, and that steadied him. He hoped his team could feel that as well, so they would know he was all right.

Hook's frown now looked curious rather than confused. "You're an Autobot and I'm a Decepticon, yet you don't seem to have understood that."

First Aid would have shaken his head if not for the damage to his optic. "You're a Constructicon and I'm a Protectobot," he said. "You're a medic and so am I."

Hook's features smoothed themselves out again into a faint, supercilious sneer. "Do you really equate us? I'm millions of years old. I've repaired mechs and brought them back from the brink of deactivation and pushed them over that edge. We are nothing alike."

"Other than the fact that I lost an optic and you lost a hook, neither of which needed to have happened." That was the worst of war, First Aid thought, the useless and senseless waste on both sides. And although he tried not to think of medics as being in any way better or more valuable than any other mechs, a cold hollowness formed deep within his frame when he imagined an explosion destroying Hook, wiping out millennia of experience with repairs and with saving mechs only astroseconds away from deactivation.

The millennia of experience with dissecting or deactivating mechs would not be such a loss, but everything else…

"Of course," Hook said casually, as if the idea had just occurred to him, "I could always get my hook back." He rose to his feet.

"Keep your distance or I _will_ fire." First Aid still held his gun in his free hand, the gun he had never fired before.

"Oh? Whatever happened to that pacifism?"

That was one of First Aid's most strongly held convictions, but the bond that connected him to his team ran just as deep, and he knew what they had felt when they'd sensed him being attacked. They would never have been so afraid for Blades or Streetwise, and although Groove also hated fighting, he was a scout—quick and quiet and rarely involved in direct combat.

_But I get close to the front lines or closer, I risk my safety to help other mechs and my team knows I won't fight back_. First Aid was more than willing to put his neck on the line for his beliefs, but he wasn't prepared to risk any other Protectobot's safety. _Or, for that matter, their peace of mind_.

"I won't let you harm my team," he said, and although he wanted to speak like Ratchet at his most forceful—in the kind of tone which could make any mech feel as though he was five feet small—his voice came out quiet instead. "In any way."

He wasn't sure if Hook had even heard him, but the thunder was gone and the machine-gun rattle of the rain had quieted to a hushed patter. In the darkness, Hook's optics glowed like embers.

"Speaking of them," he said, "are you stalling for time until they find you?"

"Are you waiting until your self-repairs fix your flight systems?" First Aid couldn't think of any other reason why a Decepticon would simply be… talking… to him. A cynical part of him that was probably spillover from Streetwise's side of the gestalt bond suggested that Hook might have been trying to lead other 'cons to that location, but somehow First Aid couldn't see Hook trying to get other 'cons to take down a Protectobot medic whom he had failed to subdue himself—if only because he ran the risk of being a laughing-stock in his own army if he did so.

"At least you're not a complete fool," Hook said finally, sounding as though this was a great concession on his part. "And since, unlike myself, you _are_ in need of repairs…"

He took a pace closer and First Aid's hands tightened—one on the gun, one on the hook he still held, a snapped length of cable still trailing from it. Hook held up both hands, fingers spread. Then he slowly closed one hand and something appeared in it. First Aid dialed up the zoom and infrared functions on his single optic, wishing he could see better and wondering what kind of weapon that was.

_A tool_. Decepticon and Autobot technology had diverged a long time ago, but First Aid had no difficulty recognizing repair tools. It looked like a welder, but it was long, narrow and flexible as if it had been multiply jointed, designed to bend at angles.

"Use this to perform field repairs on your axle." Hook's voice was as matter-of-fact as if he hadn't been trying to kill or maim First Aid just minutes earlier. "You can work it through the seams in your armor without having to remove the entire limb assembly."

"I wouldn't have removed—"

"Oh, please. I'm only too aware of the limitations of Autobot medical training." Hook held out the welder. "A trade. This for my hook."

First Aid looked at the welder warily, because he half-expected it to squirt acid into his already damaged shoulder. And if Hook had simply asked for his hook back, First Aid would have given it to him.

"You want to trade a piece of Decepticon medical technology for a hook?" he said.

"It was a gift," Hook said shortly, and threw the welder at him. First Aid dropped his gun and caught the tool automatically. It didn't blow up in his face. He tossed the hook, and a green hand grabbed it from the air and slipped it into subspace.

First Aid's radio crackled. _"—are you there?"_ It was Hot Spot. "_Transmit your coordinates; we're coming."_

First Aid wasn't sure what to tell his commanding officer about Hook, so he settled for transmitting his coordinates and hoping Hook would leave before the other Protectobots got anywhere near. Then, keeping the welder at arm's-length, he thumbed it active. He dared to look away from Hook while he applied the glowing point to the rent in his arm plating, something he could remove or endure if the welder turned out to be a weapon instead. The cut edges of metal glowed and fused and joined together.

Hook had been watching him with a half-amused smile at the corner of his mouth. "Repair yourself or not, as you please," he said. "Oh, but one last thing before I leave." The smile was gone as though it had never existed, though the edge of disdain had also left his voice. "Optics can be replaced. Sparks can't. Keep that in mind for next time."

Thrusters kicked on with a muffled growl and he soared up into the sky, past the clouds that were starting to clear. The storm was over.

* * *

After he had finished recalibrating his new optic, First Aid glanced over at Blades, who had crashed—thankfully not from too high—after his entire tail rotor assembly had been shot off. Blades had been so torqued off that he had limped back into the battle, determined to tear apart any 'cons he could find, but even more unfortunately he had stumbled across Ratchet, who had immediately hauled him off the field for repairs.

Ratchet had not been too pleased to find out about First Aid's damage either, and after hearing who had caused it, he had given First Aid a short but sharp talking-to about not mistaking enemy medics for the kind of repair providers who took oaths to do no harm. "They're Decepticons first," he said, "killers second, experimenters third and opportunists fourth. Somewhere after that the 'medic' part comes in."

Feeling both relieved and guilty that he hadn't divulged the whole story, First Aid watched as Ratchet worked on Blades, and while the repairs were in progress, the rest of the Protectobots arrived, one by one. Groove was last, but then again, he usually was. It was First Aid's turn to be repaired by then, but Ratchet was done with him quickly, and none of the other Protectobots had been damaged. _One more battle lived through_.

Once Ratchet had left them alone in one of the few private rooms off the repair bay, though, he had to tell his team everything. Streetwise was furious in a cold, steady way that did not bode well for any Constructicon he might encounter in the future, and if Blades had been online First Aid knew he would have felt the same way. Hot Spot shook his helm.

"He was right about one thing," he said finally. He didn't have to specify who he was talking about, because the Protectobots rarely if ever needed to spell things out to each other. "You can't risk your life like that, Aid. Never again."

First Aid felt his shoulders slump. It was true, he couldn't do that to his team, and yet what else could he do if he saw a trail of spilled fuel or found a badly injured mech? Turn his back? And all through the experience he had never felt his life was at risk except for the moments when Hook had attacked him. After that it had quickly gone back to… well, to as normal as possible for a confrontation between an Autobot and a Decepticon.

He knew better than to say any of that, though, so he only apologized for panicking the other members of his team. "I didn't mean to upset any of you," he said.

Groove put an arm around him. "We weren't upset. We were just…"

"Taken aback," Streetwise supplied, "because all we felt from you was the usual—you don't like fighting and you're worried about other mechs but you're happy to help. Then there was this little explosion—"

"I'm sorry. It was a completely autonomic response."

"—before you were fine again, just a little more wary and as far as I'm concerned that's a good thing."

Groove's arm tightened. "We're just glad you weren't badly hurt."

First Aid swallowed, not sure what to say. He felt sure that the reason Hook hadn't tried anything further was because he'd sensed he was up against a mech who wasn't afraid of him. _And I didn't feel afraid because…_ He wasn't sure. He just knew that was his way of dealing with what was wrong, what was unfair and what was a senseless waste—to not be afraid of it.

"It helped that the storm was over by then," he said, thinking of the fallen telephone pole he'd seen on the way back to the Ark, and the trees blackened by lightning strikes. He remembered the plane he'd seen struck down as well; it had to have been a Seeker, because all the Aerialbots were safe and accounted for. "Actually, we must have been in the center of it all the time, because it was calm where we were."

"No, you weren't." Hot Spot rested a hand on his shoulder, and First Aid sensed the start of a smile behind his mask. "You bring the eye of the storm with you, Aid. You always have."

* * *

_Author's note: Hope you liked it! I thought this would be a one-shot, but given that the Protectobots have_ no _idea what Hook actually had in mind, there's going to be another chapter for his perspective__. Stay tuned!_


	2. Second Opinion

_Author's note: Merry Christmas, everyone! Here's the rest of the fic, and I hope you all enjoy the holiday. _

* * *

**Chapter 2 : Second Opinion**

One the rare occasions when the Constructicons had no particular assignments, had completed their daily inspection-and-maintenance duties and had repaired everyone who both needed and deserved repairs, they worked on various projects of their own.

Scrapper always had plans and ideas in the back of his mind, but he also liked to see what the rest of his team was up to, so he went to Long Haul's quarters first. Mostly because he could hear voices coming from inside.

"I don't understand," Mixmaster was saying. "You complain all the time about having to carry supplies about—yes, yes, you do. But now you're building a toy that's… for carrying supplies about?"

"It's a freight train," Long Haul said, pronouncing the last two words as though Mixmaster was glitched in both the audials and the CPU (as far as Scrapper knew, just the CPU). "Now go away unless you got something useful to say!"

Scrapper looked in curiously. The doors to Long Haul's quarters were open because Mixmaster was leaning against the doorframe inside, tripping the proximity sensors, and Bonecrusher had commandeered the single chair. A huge worktable was covered with what looked like a landscape in miniature—small rocks set up as a mountain range, sloping hills and a pool of water with a delicate suspension bridge built over it. A railroad wound its way through the mountains and over the tiny lake, before looping back to form a large circle.

"Oh, it's you," Long Haul said, not exactly sounding delighted to see him. More like resigned, Scrapper thought. "Well, come on in. Might as well get everyone's unsolicited opinion on it."

"I'm sure Scavenger liked it," Scrapper offered. _Whatever it's supposed to be._

"Yeah, well, Scavenger likes everything," Long Haul said. "Besides, most of the raw materials came from him."

"What exactly is it supposed to do?" Scrapper said, finally giving in to curiosity.

Mixmaster peeled himself off the wall and came over to point. "See the little train?"

Scrapper nodded. An engine he could easily have covered with one hand stood on the narrow rails, hooked up to a line of small cars. One of them was open, and filled with minute black chunks. Scrapper felt no wiser than he had been before he had noticed it.

"The train runs around the track," Mixmaster said, as if imparting world-shaking and highly confidential news.

Long Haul gave him a glare that could have split atoms. "It does more than that!" he said. "There are working signals and barriers and switches. You can make the train increase speed, change tracks, go over the bridge and through the tunnel—"

"—to wind up exactly where it started in the first place," Mixmaster said.

"I guess you'd make it fall right off the fragging table?"

Mixmaster snorted. "I'd do something a little more exciting than just have the train run around and around. Maybe…" He rubbed his chin. "Have another train on the track, but going in the opposite direction. And both of them should be carrying nitroglycerin."

Long Haul lifted the screwdriver he was holding, then seemed to realize that since the tool was about the size of his littlest finger, it was unlikely to even scratch Mixmaster's paint if it connected. He made a vehement gesture with it instead. "So they can crash and go up in a flaming explosion?"

"Only if whoever's operating them is too slow to switch them to separate tracks," Mixmaster said.

"Hey, that might not be such a bad idea, Haul." Bonecrusher had been leaning back so his chair was braced against the wall, but he tilted it forward and thudded down, looking much more interested. "We could have competitions… make the landscape into an obstacle course, with rocks rigged up to fall across the track, weakened suspension cables on the bridge, a dead mech's curve—"

"Right, that's it." Long Haul flung his screwdriver down with a sharp _clink_. "Both of you, out. Now. _Now!_"

"If—if you insist," Mixmaster said cheerfully. "Maybe we'll build our own rail transport model, with calcium carbide, and TNT!" He slipped out, chuckling, and Bonecrusher followed at a more leisurely pace. Scrapper wasn't sure whether Long Haul wanted him to stay or whether Long Haul was understandably reluctant to try throwing his commanding officer out, but when the doors hissed shut again, he said, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Long Haul didn't say anything for a moment while he retrieved his screwdriver. "I guess so," he said. "You could check the decoders in the Comet, make sure the light works—"

"The Comet? Oh, the engine." Scrapper picked it up carefully and prised the outer shell off, dialing up the zoom function on his optic band. "Smoke canister? What's that for?"

"Primitive locomotives ran on fossil fuels."

"Oh, right." They worked in silence for a little while until Scrapper said, "Did Astrotrain have anything to do with all this?"

Long Haul made a disgusted sound. "No. It was my idea." He paused. "But I asked him if he wanted to take a look." He twitched one shoulder as if trying to shrug. "He just laughed. Said it was so tiny even Soundwave's midgets would need magnifiers to play with it."

_I'll keep that in mind if he ever asks for our help_. Scrapper switched the engine's single headlight on and off. It flashed bright as a star.

"It's not that tiny," Long Haul said.

"Of course not," Scrapper said. "Now turn the lights off and let's see how everything looks."

"Lights off!" Long Haul said, and the room went dark. Except for the worktable. Signals glowed amber and green, tiny lampposts flickered into life, the station lit up and a spotlight picked out the tunnel. The engine's headlight burned through the darkness like a laser. Scrapper was ready to start it all running at that moment, even if the train did nothing but go around and around the track, but Long Haul said he still had work to do on the scenery. That was definitely a hint that Scrapper wasn't needed any longer. Long Haul could be very private about his hobbies, especially when he felt other mechs might be a little too inclined to offer suggestions.

So Scrapper complimented him on his meticulous work and went to see what Hook was doing.

He was in the repair bay. All the Constructicons had quarters nearby, but Hook had taken a room attached directly to the bay and seemed to like that. He was the most territorial of them all, and sometimes behaved as though the repair bay was his own property that had somehow ended up on Megatron's ship.

Now he sat at a narrow workbench and made the final adjustments to what he had built.

Scrapper glanced around, but all the repair berths were empty; any equipment Hook had used was either being cleaned or had been stowed away neatly. Their most recent battle had ended with results Scrapper at least found agreeable. The Decepticons had achieved their objective, which was good, but it had not been a spectacular victory with no damage on their side. That was also good, because it meant Megatron wouldn't order them into the field again soon, in the hopes of crushing the Autobots while they were on their knees reeling with the defeat. So Hook had repaired one of the Seekers while Scrapper reattached his hook—not because that was absolutely vital, but because seeing Hook without it was like seeing a 'con missing the Decepticon insignia. Scrapper's fingers itched to do something about it.

Hook had evidently found time to clean up as well, because there was no indication he'd been caught in the crossfire of the battle. He didn't give any indication he had seen Scrapper, either, but that was normal for him, especially when he had something else to absorb his interest. Scrapper approached from the other side of the bench and looked at what Hook was working on.

_So different_, he thought. Long Haul's model railroad was only too clearly inspired by the primitive transport systems of that planet's natives, but Hook despised everything about Earth and had built a Cybertronian… device… instead. Long Haul's project was made up of hundreds of small parts and pieces, but Hook's was stark in its simplicity. It was a tall box with clear glass for the two widest sides, though Scrapper heard the not-quite-baffled hum of electronics concealed in the other two sides and the base.

Inside, the box was empty except for a long strip of metal. _Some kind of alloy_, Scrapper thought when he noticed the ripples of grey on the metal's surface. Either Mixmaster or Scavenger could have identified the component elements easily, but he felt more puzzled than when he had looked at Long Haul's masterpiece.

"What is this?" he said finally.

"An amusing diversion I saw once." Hook had been adjusting the box's controls, but before Scrapper could crane his head to see any of the inner workings, he slid a panel shut with a decisive _click_. He pulled a cloth from subspace and began to polish the glass.

Scrapper looked at the flat rectangle of metal in the bare interior. "It's very entertaining."

Hook's optics narrowed. Without saying a word, he pressed a hidden switch in the box's side.

The hum of machinery grew slightly louder, and the piece of metal rose, hovering in mid-air. _Electromagnets_, Scrapper thought, _built into both sides of the box, plus antigravity in the base. _The metal hung suspended in the air, caught between two opposing forces that held it motionless.

Then the concealed machinery thrummed as the electromagnets moved, and the metal did so too. It bent in a graceful curve, then twisted smoothly into a Moebius strip. It spun about its own center like a helicopter's rotors and was suddenly a figure-8 before it curved into a complex spiral. The ripples of grey made it look like quicksilver as it flowed through the air.

_Transformation in action_. Scrapper found it difficult to look away—there was something mesmerizing about the constant movement that never formed the same shape twice. Hook sat back, though there was none of the look of pleased (some might say smug) anticipation Scrapper had expected.

"Something happened during the battle," he said abruptly, optics fixed on the coiling metal.

Scrapper drew up a chair and sat down. Long ago, Hook had learned the hard way that it was better to admit a problem to his gestalt leader up front rather than risk everyone finding out about it when they combined. And as long as the problem didn't jeopardize the safety of their team, their place in the army or the Decepticon cause (in that order), Scrapper was lenient, so now he rested his elbow-joints on the surface of the workbench and waited for Hook to continue.

Hook told him about what had happened during the battle after he had been forced off the field, and at first Scrapper felt a little disappointed that Hook hadn't been able to get enough of a jump on the Autobot medic to kill him. Destroying one of the gestalts on the other side would definitely have been a coup for the Constructicons; he could imagine Megatron praising them while Onslaught and Motormaster seethed in the background. But it quickly became clear that his second-in-command had something other than deactivation in mind.

"One more idiot in an army of fools, but at least he looked like he was built yesterday," Hook said. "What's Prime's excuse?" Scrapper smiled behind his mask but didn't bother to reply, because when Hook was in rant mode, he didn't need any help from an audience. "Sending a mech to a battlefield without any combat training whatsoever. You should have seen him flailing around. Not to mention just sitting there dithering when he was fortunate enough to take me by surprise for a moment."

Scrapper nodded. The electromagnets' thrumming turned to a sawlike rasp and the piece of metal hurtled from one wall of the box to another, so fast that Scrapper thought it would shatter the glass. It never did, of course. Hook had calibrated all the controls so that the metal strip stopped less than a millimeter from the glass, rigid with tension, before it flipped end-over-end to the other side of the box.

Hook's voice grew quieter, though it was no less intense. "And you know the worst of it? He was a naïve little idealist with a level of outdated moralizing and a horror of war that was remarkable even for an Autobot…. but he was a medic. Or trying to be one, anyway. If he ever gets into a confrontation like that again and doesn't defend himself, it'll be a moot point. Not to mention a senseless waste."

"He had potential?" Scrapper said, keeping his tone as neutral as possible.

Hook nodded, still without looking at him. "If I were responsible for training a newly-sparked mech like that, I'd make him the kind of medic who couldn't be trifled with under any circumstances. Otherwise why bother with the build and resources and databanks and programming? If I'd had a functional gun at the time, all those would have been dispersed in a fifty-yard radius. But of course, you can't expect the Autobots to take any such precautions." A bitter tone crept into his voice. "They have raw material that they're molding into complete slag."

_And you don't_, Scrapper thought, understanding at once. The Decepticons had produced two other combiner teams, but no one in those was at all interested in repairs or surgery. With the possible exception of Vortex, and he had only learned basic field repairs so that his fellow Combaticons—or anyone whom he might need to interrogate later—could be kept online long enough to be taken to a base. Even if the subject had fascinated him, though, he would never have gotten along with Hook, much less taken orders from him.

It was a shame, Scrapper thought. An apprentice might have been good for Hook for as well, because for all his intelligence and skill, Hook was impatient, egotistical and perfectionistic, to the point that few mechs outside of his team could stand him. And while the Constructicons provided Hook with all the support and companionship he needed (not that he would ever admit to such needs), none of them would ever have been in a student-to-master position to him. They had their own specialties, where they were experts, and that made them all more or less equals.

Hook clearly wanted something more now, though Scrapper knew he would probably deny any such wish to the day he deactivated. Like Bonecrusher, Hook could easily pinpoint flaws in design and construction, and his natural response to those was to correct them by any means necessary. It was one of the factors that made him an excellent engineer.

The problem was, though, the flaws he was now focusing on weren't on a blueprint. They were in an Autobot, and the only appropriate response to an enemy's weakness was to take advantage of the superior position and react with force, rather than wanting to reshape that enemy in one's image and likeness. That was why Hook had said "if" a lot. Even in the midst of rant mode, he was careful. Not that he had anything to fear from another Constructicon, but the repair bay was not a private location. Scrapper had already had one look into the barrel of a fusion cannon while he tried to convince Megatron of his team's loyalty, and he didn't ever plan to repeat that experience.

_Still, it's a pity we can't do anything about this_. He would have been happy to give Hook an apprentice, if that was what he wanted, but they could hardly keep an enemy mech hidden on the ship for long. Not for the first time, Scrapper wished the Constructicons had their own landbase, but they were too useful to the army. Megatron would always want them close at hand.

On the other hand, what if Megatron knew about the Autobot but had given his permission? _And why might he do that? Because it deprives the Autobots of a gestalt, and if the rest of the Protectobots don't know what happened to this one,they're hardly likely to try infiltrating the ship to look for him. _ Scrapper turned that over in his mind, and suddenly it was as though he was looking at the surface of a blank drafting-pad, something waiting for his design and plan. His elbow-joints were still resting on the workbench's surface, but now he raised his hands and clasped them so he could rest his chin on them as he considered.

Hook noticed that at once, naturally. Scrapper sometimes thought that the lack of facial features common to half the Constructicons was because of their gestalt link; they didn't need to see what their teammates felt, because they always sensed it. Hook looked at him for the first time since he had started speaking, curiosity making his optics glow fractionally brighter.

Between them, the strip of metal slowed in its frantic whirling from one corner of the box to another. It sank down as the electromagnets depowered themselves, and lay flat on the base.

"As you said, an amusing diversion." Scrapper indicated the toy with a tilt of his helm. "Oh, one thing you didn't mention. Who _was_ that Autobot you damaged?"

"He didn't tell me his name." Hook's voice was dismissive. "Probably something like Melting Spark. But he's the left arm of his gestalt. And transforms into an ambulance."

"Well, no doubt we'll see him again some time." Scrapper slid off the chair. "Come on, let's go refuel."

* * *

_Author's notes : Every brilliant, vain and unethical medic needs an assistant. Just ask Knock Out. :)_

_This chapter references the G1 episode "The Master Builder". This fic also ends here, because it's the story of Hook's and First Aid's first meeting, and what the two of them thought about each other. Of course, at some point in the future Scrapper may come up with a plan that sets a whole 'nother series of events in motion, but for now, I hope you liked "Emergency Medicine". And feedback is always welcome!_


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